A Guardian of Innocents (2 page)

Just don’t look them in the eye and you won’t feel guilty.  

The worst of the worst happened when I was eleven, when Jack got off work early and brought his friend with him. I don’t like to talk about it. Just thinking about that time sends me into a belligerent rage. If I dwell on it too long I lose control of my emotional state. But considering that it’s very relevant to the story, I better just get it out now or else I’ll be dreading it until I do.

Normally if Jack had gotten off work early, that wouldn’t have mattered because Doris was a stay-at-home housewife and mother. If Doris was at home and wide awake, Jack was hesitant to touch me. He was braver, but still paranoid. But around my eleventh birthday Doris had to take a part-time job in order to “make ends meet” as she explained to me.

It seemed money had gotten a little tight for some reason. I read Doris at the moment she was telling me this and I knew where my adoptive parents’ money had gone. I knew because she knew, but of course she didn’t have the guts to confront Jack with it and played dumb for him.

Where did all their money go? Porno tapes, porno mags and even the occasional massage parlor whore. More and more shit to feed his sickness.

There was something in her mind which sounded funny to me at that age. In Doris’ mind she said,
We’re knee-deep in bounced checks…

I didn’t know at the time what that meant and I pictured Jack and Doris wading through the living room filled with rubber bank checks that would bounce around with every step they took.

Doris now waited tables at a shithole diner three nights a week and didn’t get off until nine. The bus pulled up to my block after school. I was walking down the steps with my backpack slung over my shoulder when a feeling struck me:
Jack is already home
.

I stood on the sidewalk, knowing. Just knowing. There was no voice whispering the information into my ear, no vision of him plopped down in front of the TV.

I just knew.

I looked past the carefully-tended lawns of our neighbors one by one, as my head rose up to look at our driveway half a block away. And I observed Jack’s light blue Nova parked in the driveway.

My stomach drifted around like an anchorless boat. I stretched out with my mind, trying to locate him in the house, trying to listen to what he was thinking. The bus’ air brakes whished as it rumbled on towards its next stop, leaving me to stand alone on the corner of West 7
th
and Woodward Lane. I was a boy who knew what waited for him half a block away. But I was also a boy who had nowhere else to go. I had no friends whatsoever at that age, none of our relatives lived nearby and I had exactly thirty-two cents in the zipper pocket of my cheap, Velcro-strapped wallet.

But I wanted to run away just then. Turn 180 degrees around and put as much distance between that house and myself as I possibly could. I wanted to scream, “I don’t give a fuck!” to all the thoughts of all the bad things that can happen to an eleven-year-old runaway.

But as my feet progressed forward, I realized I wasn’t going to do that.   

When I was almost at the house, the
knowing
came again. There was someone else in the house with Jack, but not Doris, another man, a friend of his.

An intense relief hit me so hard it felt like post-traumatic shock. Jack would never try anything with company in the house. But I still felt uneasy about this man and I didn’t know why.

I unlocked the front door and walked into the living room where Jack and his buddy were sitting on the couch with both pairs of legs stretched across to the long coffee table in front of them, neither of them making any effort to turn off the porn movie on the television which was clearly visible to me. Two lipstick lesbians going at it. . . Lovely.

They said not a word to me as I passed in front of them heading straight to my room, not stopping to get a drink or even use the bathroom. But I could feel the gaze of Jack’s friend skimming over my body hungrily, like a jackal that’s spotted a young and injured gazelle. Easy kill.

I closed the door quietly behind me as I entered my room, gently setting my backpack on the foot of my bed. I flipped on my Nintendo and turned the volume down on my small black and white TV to where it was just barely audible to me. I was scared, and I thought if they don’t hear anything I do, then maybe they’ll forget I’m in the house.

After about fifteen minutes I was completely enraptured by the video game I was playing… until my door slowly opened, and in walked Jack’s buddy.

He wasn’t a tall man, but he looked long in the body because he was so disgustingly thin. He was old, probably around sixty, with a bald head and white whiskers growing out of his ears. He had all kinds of flesh-colored bumps on his face. Not pimples, more like in-grown hairs.

He also had a southern drawl and spoke like he was always out of breath, “Hi yuh, muh name’s Willy. Yuh daddy in there’s a frenduh mine.”

Willy sat down on my bed next to my backpack. I was sitting in a small wooden chair, one of those really short chairs made especially for children. I was too big to sit in it all the way, but I sat on the edge of it to play video games a lot. My room was small, and when he leaned forward his head was only about two feet away from mine.

“I thought maybe you n I could git acquainted some. Yuh daddy’s one muh bess cust-mers. Comes intuh muh store all duh time,” Willy declared, then let out a long sigh as if saying those two sentences had drained him of all his energy and strength, “Why dontcha come ovah here on the bed and sit next tuhyuh Unca Willy?”

I sat there, pretending to ignore him, with my fingers clicking away on the control pad of the Nintendo. After a few seconds passed, Willy said “Boy, I don’t like beeyun eggnord…” 

The ominous tone in his voice was making me nervous but still I refused to avert my eyes from the TV screen.

justignorehimjustignorehimandmaybehe’llgoaway

In my peripheral vision I saw his knee rise upward while his body leaned back. The chair beneath me seemed to disappear and I was falling ass-first onto the floor. Something hard and semi-sharp jabbed me in the lower back, perfectly on the spine.

My face grimaced with pain as I looked around to see what it was he had done. It seemed Uncle Willy had kicked the chair out from underneath me and my lower back had landed on one of its arms.

Willy stood up, “Ida thought yuh daddy’d teechuh better manners den dat.”

He looked gigantic to me just then, standing over me while I was sprawled out on the floor. My eyes met his… and then I turned my face away into the light beige carpet of my room. And I cried.

I cried because I knew what was going to happen. And I cried because I knew there was next to nothing I could do about it.

“Yuh oughta show more ‘preciation to a man who loaned yuh daddy some money. . .”

In his mind I saw the images of what had previously transpired, the deal he’d made with my adoptive father. One thousand dollars. For thirty minutes alone with me. I also heard through Willy’s thoughts what Jack had said to him just before he came into my room, “Just don’t break any bones or put any bruises where somebody might see ‘em. I got enough people talkin’ shit about me behind my back as it is. . . And don’t do anything that’ll put him in the hospital.”

Now Willy reached down and grabbed the top of my ear, then pinched it firmly and twisted. He pulled upward and I clambered to get up and move with him so my ear wouldn’t be torn off.

My eyes were spilling tears of pain and humiliation. 

Willy sighed, “Look boy, yuh ain’t getting outta this. Yer ass is bought and sold, yuh unnerstand me? Dis dudn’t hafta be difficult. Just do some favors fer yuh Unca Willy, and Unca Willy’s wrinkled, scrawny white ass will be on its merry lil’ way. Now, duh we we have an unnerstandin?”

I remained silent.

He then shook my head back and forth, using my ear as a handle while he mocked my answer for me, “Yeees, sir, we do!”

With one last excruciating pinch, he shoved me head-first onto the bed, “Unca Willy’s gonna show yuh how yuh respect yer elders.”

He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants, revealing the dingy off-white briefs that lay beneath.

And you know… I really can’t explain how the hell I built up any courage to do what I did next. But then again, I really don’t believe courage had much to do with it. What I did was the direct result of being pushed into a corner of final desperation and outrage.

But I remember it so well because it was the first time I had ever in all my life… fought back.

After he pushed me onto the bed, I immediately rebounded off it and threw a right jab into his chin, the skin of my knuckles scraping against his unshaven stubble. I heard something pop, and at first I thought I must have thrown the punch so hard I’d broken his jaw, or maybe smashed some teeth in.

But as Willy staggered back a few steps in amazement and surprise, I felt the tiny electric signal of pain light a spark in the base knuckles of my ring and pinky fingers. It was dull and almost unnoticeable, as if the pain was saying to me,
Yes I’m here. But I can see you’re busy, so I won’t bother you right now. We’ll talk later.
(I found out later I had minor fractures in those two fingers.)

“Whoohoo—Wee!” Willy whooped like an amused cowboy. “I sure do like it when they fight!”

He leapt at me. And we struggled. But eventually he got what he wanted. But through all the sick shit, I still had that tiny glowing ember of pride. I was proud that, this time at least, I had fought back.

After he was finished I saw his lower lip was swollen and bleeding, and it was only then I realized that I had to the power to hurt an adult. I didn’t have to
take it
anymore.

“Yer son in there’s quite a han-ful,” I heard Willy say to Jack as he left, “But he sure does have a sweet ass!”

Willy then uttered a half-choked giggle and I heard the front door close. As Jack’s footsteps approached my bedroom door, I pulled my pants up quickly, wincing at the pain from moving too suddenly.

Jack opened the door and just stood there… staring at me. I could feel his uneasiness; he was wondering how in the hell his wussy little son could give a grown man a fat lip. I turned my head so he could see the bright colors which I felt sure were already flourishing on my left ear.

“You told him no bruises where people could see, Dad. You told him not to break anything,” I said softly as I raised my hand so he could see the swelling. “Aren’t you gonna do something to him, Daddy? Show him who’s boss?”

Jack lowered his head and I could see that he actually felt ashamed of himself, but I could also feel that he was afraid of Willy. That seemed funny to me, a big middle-aged man afraid of an emaciated senior citizen.

“No, of course not, Daddy... Because you’re a cowardly piece of shit.”

Jack’s mouth fell open in a perfect O.          

“That’s right, Daddy. And if you ever touch me again, I’ll cut your throat while you sleep. Or I’ll just poison you. Maybe plug in Mom’s hairdryer and throw it into the bathtub while you’re jerking off one night. I know you like to do that.”

I felt so righteously indignant I thought I might shoot fire from my eyes. I took a step towards Jack, and felt an immense surge of power from within when he took a step back to keep his distance. He was afraid only because he believed me. Through his eyes I saw myself… And as I looked at that enraged eleven-year-old boy, I believed me too.

“Just stay in your room,” he mumbled as he closed the door behind him as he left.

Jack never touched me again. 

Chapter 3

A few weeks before I turned seventeen, I decided to kill Jack. But it wasn’t a decision made out of a need for vengeance. I know that might sound hard to believe, but it really wasn’t.

Over the past five years, I had slowly forced myself to forget all that he and his buddy had done to me. But
forget
might not be a good word to use, because you never really forget, you just try to. Those memories always come back to remind you of the past right when you least want them to. When a girl touches you, when you see a father and his son tossing a Frisbee back and forth in a park, or when you’re in a mall walking around with your parents and you see your father staring at a pretty fourteen-year-old girl licking an ice cream cone. . .

But what brought everything back full force was when I realized he intended to victimize another child. I could hear his twisted fantasies lurching around in his head like mutant serpents in a murky swamp. Everyday it seemed they got more perverse, more demented. And I knew they were all about one child in particular, but I didn’t know who that child was until Easter Sunday.

We were having our Sacrament service that morning at our church. All the members of all our church’s wards were there for one service. And if you don’t know what a ward is, allow me to explain: all Mormon churches are divided into wards, first ward arrives for Sunday service at a certain time, second ward would arrive an hour later and third ward would arrive an hour after that for their service, and so on.

But on Easter Sunday, all wards attended one service. So our small LDS church was packed with Mormons because, as everyone knows, Easter is a popular day to attend church, even for those who usually blow it off and sleep in.